The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

7: The One

The Pacific Coast Highway was magnificent, but not because of the endless stretch of the bluest sky, cliff faces that crumbled away to golden beaches, or the glittering ocean beyond. With every kilometer we drove, I was further away from Sigma.

Snuggling deeper into the passenger seat I mused on what Will had said earlier; I needed to chill, and accept that busting out of Sigma would leave me mixed-up for a few days. Aside from a couple of hiccups over the past twenty-four hours, I was holding up OK.

Oh yeah, Zeph? Hiccups like crying, vomiting, fainting, thinking that a blowjob is appropriate payment for saving your life?

"Fuck off, Jun-su," I muttered under my breath. OK, so I was a little mixed-up. But the further I got from what had been the center of my life for almost three years, the less trapped I felt. And I liked the idea of a couple of days' rest by Will's ocean in Arenosa, safe and protected from Sigma until I got back to my ocean in Busan.

Will was playing a jazz album with tracks that, like the music we'd heard in Mozhgan's bedroom, were eerily familiar to me from recitals and concerts, but I'd never thought to find out what any of them were called. To my surprise I could predict the chords in most of the tracks on the album; my ears must have heard them often but they'd been left abandoned on a shelf somewhere in my brain, unexplored and unnoticed.

"What's this music?" I asked, feet grudgingly tapping along to the quaver triplets in one of the more unpredictable tracks. It began in C minor and kept resolving in unexpected tonal centers. It was slowly fucking my head up.

"Sunday at the Village Vanguard. It's a live album."

"What's the Village Vanguard?"

"It's a jazz club. Oldest one in New York."

"Did Mozhgan go there?"

Will laughed, perhaps glad that I'd remembered about Mozhgan's days of foot-tapping and wine-drinking as a young woman in N.Y.C. "All the time. She loved it. My uncle did too."

"Why do I feel like I've heard this album about a hundred times before?"

Will turned to me with a huge grin on his face. "Because it's the best live jazz album ever recorded." Yeah. To say that Will was into jazz was an understatement.

A delightful little spark ignited in my heart; I'd found a topic that would encourage Will to talk on the long-ass journey. Unfortunately, it was fucking jazz. The spark dampened a little. Maybe three hours of silence was better than me spending three hours eviscerating Will's beloved music.

"Why does this track start in C minor and then go into those random tonics? It's unnatural."

"They aren't random tonics. They're chosen carefully," he chuckled. "But I can't explain it to you, because you don't play piano anymore." So, Will was still salty about that.

"Ugh, not that again. Did my Mom tell you to say that?"

Will laughed, a deep rumbling bass-baritone. But I was intrigued by his insistence that the key changes in the track had some hidden order to them.

"OK, jazz-nut. What do you mean they're chosen carefully?"

"I mean," Will stroked a hand down his beard, like he was selecting the best way to explain, "You don't need to go to your tonal home to feel like things are resolved. And sometimes, it's thrilling to resolve things in a completely new place."

"Oh." That could be technically true. But my piano teacher hadn't talked about that stuff. Back in high school, she'd been determined for me to learn how to replicate any repertoire with flawless technique. We'd always planned to start advanced composition, but exams, and then summer school, and then an inconvenient kidnapping, had gotten in the way.